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3.22.2015

More on Social Media Promotion Services: BuckBooks (NO!) and BKnights (Maybe!)

BuckBooks, operated by ArchAngelInk (AKA ArchAngelEST, Matt
Stone, Rob Archangel, Buck Flogging, et al), is a promotion service that
requires member authors to promote and talk up the service in exchange for free
promotion. Be aware that authors talking up the service typically are being
compensated in some way to do so, whether by virtue of their free promotions or otherwise.

BuckBooks is not a mini BookBub or anything
approaching a mini anything and those stating such are doing so for the sole purpose of getting authors to sign up. Team ReadIndies has not been able to verify any of the wild claims of sales success, and we have tried many times. ReadIndies is issuing an avoid advisory on this service, based on
this behavior and the behavior of its founders.

In our earlier report on Social Media Promotion Services,
we were disappointed to find that by and large the facebook/twitter/blog services didn't work. However, we did hold back on discussing a service with potential:

Although this service was included in our earlier study, we
just now completed full research on the service for the 24 participating authors
who used the service to promote 34 books from many genres/categories,
including:

Mystery

Thriller

Romance

Scifi

Fantasy

Horror

Literary Fiction

Self-Help

Cooking

Health

At least 16 of the 24 participants used the service one or
more times. What follows is a summary of results gathered.

We didn't include our research in the previous report as
fundamental changes to the service were made subsequent to the time we started
our research.

Bknights provides several Fiverr gigs, all of which revolve
around various social media promotions:

$5 for promotion to 15 Best Kindle sites

$5 for FB Page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Digital-Book-Spot/376198459143010?fref=ts

$5 for promotion on a website at www.DigitalBookSpot.com

$5 for promotion on Twitter @DigitalBookSpot

$5 for promotion via DigitalBookSpot newsletter for ebook
lovers

The first gig submits a FREE kindle book to 15 kindle
sites/facebook groups. The remaining four gigs revolve around DigitalBookSpot
promotions. Individually, the participants did not believe each option was
worth $5, and collectively, the full package doesn't seem to be worth $25
either. However, if you can get multiple services for $5 instead of $15, $20 or
$25, this likely would be a good value.

To get multiple services for $5, you must be a member of one
of the discussion forums that Brian, who runs the service, hangs out at, and
you must mention the forum when ordering the gig. Just be aware, that this
preferential treatment, given to a subset of customers, gives extra value that
may be the source of the excessively high praise. Keep in mind, however, that
you might not get the preferential treatment or the value from which the raves
are derived, and the raves themselves are often from the same raters over and
over. (NOTE: Fiverr allows the same raters to rate as many times as they use a
service with no limitations and that's how a few raters rating over and over can
suddenly become thousands.)

Further, when reviewers are talking about getting XYZ of
downloads from a Bknights promotion, they're talking about books in popular
categories being given away for free at Amazon that may or may not have
received any actual boost from the service.

ReadIndies advice for anyone considering Bknights is to use
the website gig and no other options. The Twitter and Facebook gigs have
virtually no value (and should in fact be free as part of the standard $5 gig).
The value of the newsletter is growing, as the subscriber base grows. However,
at the time of this writing, having a listing in the newsletter isn’t worth $5.

If possible, you should also ensure you receive more than
one service for $5. Otherwise, at present, way too many books are being
featured each day for there to be any consistent value. As examples:

90 books were featured on 2/17; 71 books were featured on
2/16; 59 books were featured on 2/15

121 books were featured on 3/18 and 79 were featured on 3/17

That's way too many features for any book to stand out, and
substantially different than the number of books featured historically. As an
example, these numbers are 3X - 4X what they were last June/July -- and that
was a time when listings could stay up for multiple days as well.

To be clear as crystal, Bknights was absolutely a good value
last June/July and earlier, with 25 or so books featured each day. However,
with 80, 90, 100 or more books now being featured at a time, Bknights is no
longer a good value. Some few who use the service may get results to return the
nominal investment; many others won’t.

It should also be pointed out that Bknights is much more
than a $5 service. If in fact 70 books on average are new features each
day, that means Bknights could quickly develop into a $100K+ a year business. While we
think Fiverr may be a good place to start a business, we hope Bknights will develop the service further to ensure every author gets true value.

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